Delta Takes Off On Social With Personalized Videos For SkyMiles Medallion Members

Each year, Delta deploys a campaign to thank its SkyMiles Medallion loyalty program members.

Past campaigns used emails sent to top Medallion members. In 2016, Delta began leveraging its members’ travel habits to personalize the campaign, showing each member stats about their year with Delta, said Julieta McCurry, managing director of US marketing communications and sponsorships at Delta.

But these emails also had static content with a limited set of data inputs, she said.

This year, working with its digital agency, DigitasLBi, and dynamic video platform Idomoo, Delta took personalization a step further by creating hundreds of thousands of videos for all its Medallion members that displayed more personalized data points, McCurry said.

“We provided other [data] that we knew customers wanted to see, whether that’s the number of upgrades they had with Delta or the destination that they travel to the most,” she said. “Even things like where they rank traveling with Delta and how they stack up versus peers.”

While Medallion members received the same video, each was overlaid with different stats based on their specific year traveling with Delta, said Kelly Jacxsens, VP account director at DigitasLBi.

“We created the storyline for each customer by establishing the data points we wanted to highlight and creating business rules for determining what each member would receive,” she said. “We were able to identify at the customer level what data points would apply to each customer, and then Idomoo delivered on that story.”

Delta took learnings from its previous campaign to improve upon the experience for members this year and extend the campaign across channels.

Last year, for example, users engaged with the video across social, but posted static screen shots because they didn’t have an easy way to share it. This year, Delta embedded share buttons, which generated more than 400,000 video views across channels and resulted in the campaign hashtag #deltamedallionlife appearing in more than 1,000 posts.

Delta’s click-through rate from the email to the landing page hosting the video was 500% over its benchmark, and each video was viewed on average more than once, McCurry said.

“The level of engagement, which is our key KPI, was overwhelmingly positive,” McCurry said. “Within seconds of sending the emails, we saw mentions on social and sharing. The speed at which the reactions were made surprised us the most.”

Next year, Delta will continue to play with the frequency and level of data it brings into personalized interactions.

“This is the type of communication that works well with customers,” McCurry said. “You're providing something customized to them and sharing things that they want to see not just for themselves but share with their family and friends.”